1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a shift lever assembly for operating a transmission of an automotive vehicle, and more particularly to such a shift lever assembly of a floor shift type having a tiltable shift lever which is disposed between a driver's seat and a front passenger's seat and which is tiltable to its inoperative position when the transmission is placed in a given operating position.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Recently, a so-called "floor shift" type shift lever is widely employed in an automotive vehicle equipped with an automatic transmission. This type of shift lever is positioned between the driver's seat and the front passenger's seat, so as to extend generally upward above the floor of the driver's compartment. The shift lever is operatively connected to the automatic transmission via a control link including a control cable, for changing the operating position of the transmission.
In an automobile equipped with a shift lever assembly including the above type of shift lever, the driver is sometimes required to move to or from the driver's seat, past the front passenger's seat when the driver gets on or off the automobile, in the case where the automotible is parked in a very narrow parking space or in a heavy traffic. In this case, the upwardly extending shift lever becomes an obstruction which disturbs the movement of the driver from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat or vice versa.
In the light of the above inconvenience, there has been proposed a tiltable shift lever assembly as disclosed for example in Laid-open publications 56-32887 and 56-42729 of Japanese Utility Model Applications, wherein a shift lever includes an upper and a lower portion which are coupled together by a pin, so that the upper portion is tiltable relative to the lower portion, for facilitating the movement of a person between the driver's and front passenger's seats.
In the proposed tiltable shift lever assembly, the upper portion of the shift lever is tilted in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle or shifting direction of the shift lever for an automatic transmission (in the primary shifting direction for a manually operated transmission). Further, there is no limitation in the shifting position of the shift lever in which the upper portion of the lever is tiltable.
If the upper portion of the shift lever is tilted toward the vehicle front, the tilted upper portion lies on the floor and tends to be an obstruction, particularly where the shift lever assembly is installed in a cab-over engine vehicle. If the upper portion of the lever is tilted toward the back of the vehicle, the tilted upper portion may interfere with a parking brake lever, and cannot take a sufficiently low position. A further drawback of the proposed tiltable shift lever assembly is caused by the coupling portion between the upper and lower portions of the shift lever. That is, when the upper portion is placed in its tilted position, the coupling portion is exposed as a projection extending from the lower portion of the lever. This projection may catch the clothes of the person in motion between the front seats of the vehicle.
If the upper portion of the shift lever is placed in its tilted position with the shift lever held in the neutral position while the vehicle is parked with the engine kept on, the shift lever may be unexpectedly moved to the other shift position if the driver's body contacts the tilted shift lever during the movement from the driver's seat to the front passenger's seat, for example.